“The future of GNOME is as a Linux based OS. It is harmful to pretend that you are writing the OS core to work on any number of different kernels, user space subsystem combinations, and core libraries. That said, there may be value in defining an application development platform or SDK that exposes higher level, more consistent, and coherent API. But that is a separate issue from how we write core GNOME components like the System Settings.

It is free software and people are free to port GNOME to any other architecture or try to exchange kernels or whatever. But that is silly for us to worry about.

Kernels just aren’t that interesting. Linux isn’t an OS. Now it is our job to try to build one – finally. Let’s do it.

I think the time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly.”

Of course a person 'behind this' is 'my favorite' linux fanatic Lennart Poettering torturing the World with another his 'great' idea.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

Really don't know why... something is starting to appeal me to it, probably mostly development possibilities and tools.... and integration, I dunno, but since beginning of this year, I installed (and deinstalled) it at least 6 times (that isn't normal for me)

Actually Qt libraries are probably the best peace of C++ code ever written. GUI which uses Qt looks definitely much nicer than Gtk at least nicer than Gtk3 and Gtk2 . KDE team in particular is very professional. They make genuine effort to be OS independent. KDE in my experience is more stable than Gnome or even Xfce. Bloat? Who cares? People who use such environments do not care about the bloat. With exception of Gtk1, Gtk is as bloated if not even more than Qt4 for example. So PC-BSD team decision to use KDE seems after all these years very logical to me. KDE can be customized to look as anything including classical Ubuntu Gnome look. For Windows users default KDE look feels probably very natural. LXDE was born as a quick dirty hack from Xfce. I do not know at this point if they have anything serious.

By the way. My favorite GUI application which I do NOT use is K3b. The only GUI application unless you count things like sane-frontends, Xfig or web-browser that I really use is Rox-filer. The major reason is thumbnail viewer.

Gnome has been Linux-centric as far back as I can remember. Over a decade ago, we were complaining that configuration files and device references were hardcoded as Linux-specific, and that was with Gnome 1.x. More recently, those who wanted Gnome had to put up with HAL and PulseAudio garbage. Similarly, I recall that KDE has always been friendly towards the BSD's.

The Gnome team is really burning bridges lately. First with Ubuntu (probably 2/3 of their install base), and now with the other UNIX-like operating systems. Some have argued that Solaris choosing Gnome half a decade ago lead to its acceptance in the corporate world...now they are dropping support? Bite the hand that feeds.

Lots of poor management decisions happening in that community recently. With the loss of Ubuntu, the negative reactions towards Gnome-shell, and the end of Novell backing Mono, I wouldn't be surprised if the project were defunct in a couple of years.

I've been thinking about this. I've written & released a few small programs, for example a small tray icon which displays your notebook's battery status.
Only FreeBSD and OpenBSD are supported. Why? Because I don't use Linux.
I don't think anyone can blame me for this ...

Of course, I am a "lone developer" and the Gnome project is a bit larger. But what if none of the Gnome developers use BSD but only use Linux.
Isn't this the same situation? Can we really blame the Gnome people for not supporting an OS none of the developers use?

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

Can we really blame the Gnome people for not supporting an OS none of the developers use?

This might not pertain to the BSD's, but Sun *did* spend millions on R&D in the early days of Gnome 2.x. Specifically for usability, accessibility, and stability. I guess the mindset is that now Sun is dead, so their improvements can be thrown out the window (see: Gnome Shell), a sort of thanks but no-thanks movement.

How many hardcore BSDs funs rally care? I had to log today into a Scientific Linux Gnome session and it was as alien as Windows 7

For my own uses, of course, it's irrelevant. But did you see the undeadly article recently by Antoine Jacoutot about how he uses OpenBSD as desktop OS with Gnome as the shell where he works? For his sake, I hope the damage people like this do is moderated by other voices.

I only saw the new 3.0 shell in a demo at a local Linux group, never tried it, but it appeared to be both buggy and have that new "kiosk" feel I so hate in modern UIs. I doubt I'll ever even try installing it, even after my 10 year old computer dies and I get better hardware. Yet perhaps for Antoine's target users it would be useful, I don't know. It would be a shame if immature, short sited developers like this one caused him and the other Gnome porters excessive work.

For my own uses, of course, it's irrelevant. But did you see the undeadly article recently by Antoine Jacoutot about how he uses OpenBSD as desktop OS with Gnome as the shell where he works? For his sake, I hope the damage people like this do is moderated by other voices.

Yes, I have seen Antoine's article. I even posted a refutal to one of moronic comments claiming that OpenBSD doesn't support network scanners and printers.

Listen, Antoine is paid to support Gnome. In my experience common user tend to get used to their GUI and stick to it. If you give them Gnome they expect to see classical Gnome outlook. A good system administrator will know that and if he puts KDE he will configure it to look just as a Gnome. If Antoine's company uses KDE the article could have been rewritten probably using sed.

Code:

$ sed 's/Gnome/KDE/g' old_article.txt > new_article.txt

There is a definitely need for a common desktop environment (formerly CDE) if Unix is to survive in any shape or form on the desktop (at least for common users). Unless you count Linux as some form of Unix, that battle in U.S. is lost due to the lack of commercial vendors (yes I know ix systems and the yada yada).

If Gnome people wants to contribute good. If not we shouldn't be crying here and
worry about the decisions we have no control over.

I hope that Gtk project doesn't follow the steps of Gnome because that would definitely create more problems at least on the short run.

What are your opinions of GNUstep and perhaps Etoile as an option for users needing a desktop following recent fashions? I still haven't gotten around to trying it lately, but at least one of Etoile's most active developers is a BSD user I believe.

I've been thinking about this. I've written & released a few small programs, for example a small tray icon which displays your notebook's battery status.
Only FreeBSD and OpenBSD are supported. Why? Because I don't use Linux.
I don't think anyone can blame me for this ...

Of course, I am a "lone developer" and the Gnome project is a bit larger. But what if none of the Gnome developers use BSD but only use Linux.
Isn't this the same situation? Can we really blame the Gnome people for not supporting an OS none of the developers use?

I think there is, for one, a battery monitor is written using the backend available on the OS you're using.. it's hard to do portability, so that goal probably wasn't on the table when you started writing it.

Something like a window manager or a desktop environment can be written by using only standard POSIX API's and common UI toolkits, when it comes down to writing "non-portable" components for such environments like, battery monitors.. they could be optionally not built when the right conditions aren't met.

What are your opinions of GNUstep and perhaps Etoile as an option for users needing a desktop following recent fashions? I still haven't gotten around to trying it lately, but at least one of Etoile's most active developers is a BSD user I believe.

I personally think that if I configure your "desktop" with JWM (Joe Window Manager), ROX-filer and hotplugd you will think that you are using Windows XP.

If it runs XMonad and gives me a decent terminal and system tray, I'm happy :-).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oko

Actually Qt libraries are probably the best peace of C++ code ever written. GUI which uses Qt looks definitely much nicer than Gtk at least nicer than Gtk3 and Gtk2 . KDE team in particular is very professional. They make genuine effort to be OS independent. KDE in my experience is more stable than Gnome or even Xfce. Bloat? Who cares? People who use such environments do not care about the bloat. With exception of Gtk1, Gtk is as bloated if not even more than Qt4 for example. So PC-BSD team decision to use KDE seems after all these years very logical to me. KDE can be customized to look as anything including classical Ubuntu Gnome look. For Windows users default KDE look feels probably very natural. LXDE was born as a quick dirty hack from Xfce. I do not know at this point if they have anything serious.

By the way. My favorite GUI application which I do NOT use is K3b. The only GUI application unless you count things like sane-frontends, Xfig or web-browser that I really use is Rox-filer. The major reason is thumbnail viewer.

Qt is a lot nicer than native development in GTK+ with C, although at least under GTK 2.x the C++ bindings are not to bad if you don't mind GTK+'s ways of doing stuff. GTK3 seems to be a great idea not that I want to know how that impacts portability, nor the probability of being able to do what I can with Qt4 (cross platform and languages) before GTK4.

It's worth pointing out though that Qt is abandoning just about everything but Tier 1 as it used to be: Linux, Windows, and OS X. But we are getting Weyland support eventually and I bet it will be easier to maintain ports of Qt/X11 on *BSD then the GNOME development stack.

What are your opinions of GNUstep and perhaps Etoile as an option for users needing a desktop following recent fashions? I still haven't gotten around to trying it lately, but at least one of Etoile's most active developers is a BSD user I believe.

We might as well design a desktop environment around Wine + qvwm. Same concept, but at least Wine is somewhat proven and gives access to a lot more apps. Plus, GNUstep is probably an Apple lawsuit waiting to happen if it ever took off.